Under
the cool shade of a tree by the entrance of Hanja Chefa Primary School, 10
women gather around a table, putting final touches to preparations for an exhibition
of their Rural Savings and Credit Cooperative activities. The chairperson is calm
and ready to receive Queen Maxima and a high level UN-delegation.

The group of women are part of the 62 member -strong Hanja
Chefa RuSACCO, formed in 2012. The Chairperson of the Rural Savings and Credit
Cooperatives or RuSACCO, tells us that “our incomes increased since we started
participating in this FAO project. We were inspired and organized ourselves to
form Hanja Chefa RuSACCO.” Aiming to improve their lives the group saves their
earned income to start vegetable gardens or buy small ruminants, such as goats
and chickens.

All the women are beneficiaries of the Food and Agriculture Organization
and World Food Programme supported Purchase from Africans to Africa project,
which supports farmers in Boricha Woreda (District) to propagate Haricot bean
seeds to increase farming production. The project gives a package of seeds and
fertilizers to farmers, after they received basic training on how to propagate
quality seeds. Consequently, they are required to sell 30% of their harvest to multi-purpose
cooperative unions, which aggregate produce from members in the region to sell it
to the WFP, which then distributes food aid and supports school feeding
programmes.This develops farmers’
engagement with Cooperative Unions giving them the opportunity to pool
resources together with other farmers to exploit wider markets and gain a
better price for their produce. Farmers who receive seeds eventually make
in-kind repayment of the 25kg seed bags, developing a local seed bank for the
area.

The women voluntarily saved Birr 15,350 (USD
812) through the sale of Haricot beans. Striving
to maintain the groups’ motto “Saving for a better tomorrow” the SACCO has
deposited these savings in the National Commercial Bank and started to
distribute loans to their members. So
far fifteen of the women have used these loans to establish vegetable gardens
and buy small ruminants. Recently, the SACCO also purchased 4,300Kg of Haricot beans,
which they will sell to unions at a higher margin.

Queen Maxima and the UN High level representatives applauded
the women’s efforts to develop their incomes while viewing their display. The
delegation also had an opportunity to see how Samuel, an agent for Omo Microfinance
Institute travels with a donated motorbike to remote rural areas to sensitize
the community on the benefits of financial services.

In Ethiopia, IFAD’s support has catalyzed the financial
sector providing credit lines to Microfinance Institutions and developing the
capacity of Cooperative Unions and RuSACCOs. The Rural Financial Intermediary
Programme (RUFIP) supports Omo MFI to expand its services through a credit loan
of Birr 18 million. The MFI now reaches all Woredas within the SNNPR, with 15 branches
and 163 sub-branches.Furthermore the
project provided trainings to cooperative promotion agents within implementing
regions.

Queen
Maxima, in her capacity as the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special
Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development, was accompanied by
senior officials from the three Rome-based UN agencies during her visit to the farmers exhibition in Boricha. Together they underlined
the role that expanding financial inclusion plays in strengthening food
security and to enhance access to
affordable financial services for the poor. Traveling with the queen on the
trip was UN World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director Ertharin Cousin, Deputy
Director-General Maria Helena Semedo of the Food and Agricultural Organization
(FAO), and Adolfo Brizzi,
Director of Policy and Technical Advisory Division and representing the
President ofthe International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

It’s been a long night. Discussions, discussions around our
grilled fish and attieké in a local maquis (outdoor restaurant). There is a
great ambiance even though there is a little heatwave and the generator gave up
on us for a little while. The discussions were so interesting that our
discussions on RIMS and success stories from Madagascar, Niger, Senegal and
Côte d’Ivoire were not interrupted!

Tuesday's theme was
RIMS – the IFAD Results and Impact Monitoring System. The IFAD team gave
an overview of some of the difficulties noticed in reports and upgraded some
tools to make the monitoring of the RIMS indicators easier. Participants are
quite pleased with the developments. In order to have better focus on RIMS, the
large group split up to work on three different themes: (i) how to choose level
1 and level 2 indicators; (ii) how to count beneficiaries (men, women,
households, etc) to estimate outreach (and make sure there is no double
counting! and (iii) how to assess level 2 indicators. It was surprising to see
how different projects perceive their work how they chose their indicators. In
the group I participated in, Madagascar shared its method of weighting the
number of RIMS indicators per component by the financial weight of that
component.. This approach was somewhat controversial and created a lot of
debate within the group.. The shortcomings of this method were discussed, such
as the value of soft investments (ex. capacity building) that are key for a
project sustainability. On this topic, the group agreed that a combination of
methods should be used to have the best reporting system possible, stressing
the necessity of choosing the few most
pertinent indicators.

As mentioned earlier, Niger, Madagascar, Côte d’Ivoire and
Senegal shared their experiences in M&E. Although the projects differ
largely, the common ideas by the presentations from these countries are
proactive solutions to M&E. For example using simple approaches, have a
common understanding of indicators by both project team and stakeholders at all
levels, constant discussions and involvement, sharing of information and most
of all, careful planning of all activities to achieve expected results. A
special thanks to these teams for some great M&E work that they were so
pleased to share.

Participants especially appreciated the sessions on how to
link and follow up on Annual Work Plans and Budget and Logical Frameworks and
the necessity for M&E planning not just annually (AWPB), but over the life
horizon of the project, with end results in mind, to ensure that activities are
thought out and planned for in a logical sequential manner throughout project
implementation.

Group work included preparing an action plan to improve RIMS
Reporting for 2013, addressing the three questions raised in the working groups
and putting to practice all of the things discussed here in Grand Bassam –
especially since a prize is at stake!

The team has left the Maniema Proveince a few days ago, but I still need to talk about the farmers that live live along the RN 31 after we made it there! Luckily Roberto (Longo, Farmer Organisations Technical
Advisor) joined the team to better target questions and respond to the queries of
our agricultural entrepreneurs.

But I forgot to tell you, how we get to the RN 31…. No
commercial planes or crazy roads, this time it’s MONUSCO (United Nations
Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo) airplanes.
MONUSCO provides safe flights to major cities in DRC with a regular flight
schedule.

Check in 6 am at MONUSCO Air Terminal. Departure time: when
the passengers have all checked in and the plane is ready to go. We actually
took off at 7:45 am. First stop: Kisangani, 1h45 minutes flying time. The
flight went well. Connecting flight from Kinsangani to Kindu: when the plane
arrives from Entebbe or around 4 pm, to arrive in Kindu around 5:30 pm.

I recall that an IFAD mission was in the Maniema Province,
in the Eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo for the Interphase
Review of PIRAM (Integrated Rural Rehabilitation Programme in the Maniema
Province). Aside from working on roads (see my last bog article) PIRAM’s main
component is to rehabilitate agriculture in the Province in a post conflict
situation. Until now, the project is already supporting over 500 farmers
organisations throughout the Maniema Province .

Back to our farmers and their organisations in the Kasongo
and Pangi production areas. The IFAD
team met a women’s group, in Kituta, who shares a community field where they
tested the properties of the rice seed received from PIRAM. The women’s group
received 100kg of "NERICA 4" short cycle rice, commonly known as “biscuit” or cookie for its sweet taste. The women decided to test this new variety
which has a short cycle of 3 months (instead of 4 months like traditional varieties
of rice) allowing them to cultivate the second rainy season (season B) typical
to the Southern hemisphere. The first rainy season in the Maniema Province has
a planting season mid-September/early October with a harvest in end of
December, January and February. The
Second season or Season B plants in end of February/March to harvest in May/June. Since traditionally the B
season is not cultivated, the hungry seasons runs from June to mid-December, of
course with PIRAM this trend is changing quickly and rice prices have become
more stable, even though they are still cheaper right after the A season
harvest in December/January. The tests have been quite positive, whereby yields
have at least doubled compared to their traditional varieties and the women
will be cultivating the B season next year.

After discussing how the women are organised, the methods
they used and the like, the team concluded have concluded that what keeps this
association of 23 women’s groups together, is the charisma and leadership of
their President as well as the bonding factor brought in by having common
fields where women have more time to socialise together even if they are
working. The IFAD team asked the women
what it is they would like as support for their group. Incredibly enough, what marked
the women’s group from many others is that their request was Knowledge! The
women asked for training to better manage their resources and to be able to
acquire credit to buy a rice processing unit. This is becoming a pressing need because
production is increasing and surpluses have a much higher value if already dehusked.
This was really an encouraging group!

Thanks to PIRAM, farmers have been proud to say that they
have more disposable income, allowing them to buy things such as small tools
for their farms, cellular phones, new cloths (pagne) to sew clothing, uniforms
for children for school, small solar panels allowing them to have basic
lighting and to charge their phones and in some cases, televisions and satellite
antennas for international channels. Encouraging results for a programme that
still has 6 years to go and that will be targeting 84 000 farmers by the
end of 2019.

West and East have joined efforts once again for an
important learning event, this time providing a platform to share experiences
in Monitoring and Evaluation for Francophone Countries in West and Central
Africa (WCA) and East and Southern Africa (ESA). This morning (2 December), IFAD had the honour
of His Excellency Mr Mamadou Sangafowa Coulibaly, Minister of Agriculture of
the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire opening the Monitoring and Evaluation Workshop
held in Grand Bassam (suburb of Abidjan, Historical City of Côte d’Ivoire and UNESCO Heritage site) at the N’SA Hotel.

In his opening statement, the Director of the West and
Central Africa Division of IFAD underlined the importance of M&E for
results based management to for a “ better chance at reaching development
objectives” while assuring us that “there is a direct link between good
management and project performance.” His Excellency the Minister of Agriculture
was very proud to personally open an IFAD workshop as IFAD has always had
quality activities in Côte d’Ivoire, but most importantly because “IFAD never
left our sides even during the most difficult we have gone through. IFAD
continued to save lives by continuing to
support agricultural production in areas where even nationals would no longer
set foot.”

In his welcoming words, Mr de Willebois underlined the
importance of M&E in projects so as to better report on real impact on the
field, learn from mistakes and design better agriculture development
programmes, truly aimed and helping the rural poor.

The objective of a workshop with a cross-cutting theme such
as M&E is to ensure that there is a common understand of M&E, its
concepts and requirements of IFAD in terms of RIMS (Results and Impact
Monitoring System), by giving projects time and space to discuss and share
experiences to build on to improve M&E systems, tools, reporting and in the
longer term improve results and impact of development projects.

After setting the scene with our M&E specialists and
facilitators from WCA’s 3SL Grant with IED Afrique, the participants
approximately 120 from some 20 countries in Sub-Saharan African (coordinators,
M&E officers, CPMs, CPOs etc) broke
up into groups to discuss their logical frameworks and results chains.

The day was filled with heated but cordial and sometimes
funny debates on this apparently passionate topic. At the end of the day, it was
clear, however, that concepts are not always as straight forward as we believe and that there is plenty of
room for interpretation…So we will continue discussions in the coming 4 days,
with emphasis on exchanges of
experiences among practitioners .

Do feel free to comment on this post to contribute to this
discussion. You can also follow the workshop on Twitter #ifadme @adeltorto or
through @IFADnews, your opinions and contributions are most welcome in the
debate.

The workshop will be running until Friday 6 December 2013.
Please stay tuned for some interesting material on workshop content and
discussions in the days to come.

About IFAD

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) invests in rural people, empowering them to reduce poverty, increase food security, improve nutrition and strengthen resilience. Since 1978, we have provided grants and low-interest loans to programmes and projects that have reached several hundred million people. IFAD is an international financial institution and a specialized United Nations agency based in Rome – the UN’s food and agriculture hub.

Disclaimer

The opinions expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). The designations employed and the presentation of material in this blog do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of IFAD concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. The designations “developed” and “developing” countries are intended for statistical convenience and do not necessarily express a judgement about the stage reached by a particular country or area in the development process.